businessman Peter Leon is the new member of Toronto City Council. Image via flickr /Bobolink

LOCAL

Retired Etobicoke businessman Peter Leon is the new member of Toronto City Council, the result of an upset vote at council to fill the seat left vacant by Doug Holyday’s provincial by-election win this summer. Mr. Leon was endorsed by Mr. Holyday as his heir-apparent. [Globe and Mail]

Police are warning students at Sheridan College’s Oakville campus not to walk alone and to avoid a nearby forested area if possible. The warnings come after two women were sexually assaulted while walking on campus in the community west of Toronto. [Globe and Mail]

Premier Kathleen Wynne is scrapping her predecessor’s long-delayed plan to spend more than $10 billion building new nuclear reactors to replace Ontario’s aging atomic fleet. “New nuclear will not be part of the long-term energy plan,” Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli said Thursday. [Toronto Star]

NATIONAL

Canadian writers reacted with ecstatic pride to Thursday’s announcement that cherished homegrown short story master Alice Munro had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, saying it was long-overdue and richly deserved. “She’s so perfect. I’m thrilled,” said Joan Barfoot from London, Ont., in southwestern Ontario, where Munro grew up. [CBC]

Projet Montréal mayoralty candidate Richard Bergeron is refusing to accept an apology from opponent Marcel CÃ´té, who has admitted his campaign made close to 1,000 robocalls critical of Bergeron’s party without identifying who paid for them. CÃ´té said he accepts responsibility for what happened, although the mistake was made by the company hired to make the calls. [CBC]

The Department of Foreign Affairs says an Iranian-Canadian man who was on death row in Tehran has returned to Canada. Hamid Ghassemi-Shall had been in an Iranian prison since he was arrested in 2008 and charged with espionage until he was freed last month. [CBC]

INTERNATIONAL

The U.S. President and House Republicans failed to reach an agreement on the six-week extension of the nation’s borrowing authority. Both sides agreed to keep talking and the Republican offer was seen as a first step toward ending the budget standoff. [Globe and Mail]

British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg is to start conversations in government about how to update the legal oversight of the UK’s security services in the light of disclosures by the Guardian that powerful new technologies appear to have outstripped the current system of legislative and political oversight. Clegg’s aides said he would be calling in experts from inside and outside Whitehall to discuss the implications of the new surveillance technologies for public accountability and trust. [The Guardian]

The Pakistani police arrested Pervez Musharraf, the nation’s former military ruler, on Thursday, opening a new criminal prosecution against him that frustrated plans by his supporters to fly him out of Pakistan. The Islamabad High Court ordered Mr. Musharraf, 70, a retired general, detained after approving an application from a cleric who wants him tried for his role in the deadly siege of the Red Mosque in Islamabad in 2007. [New York Times]